Last year we did a boat trip to the Mentawai islands with a group of watermen for the first ever Stand Up Paddle indo trip. The trip was amazing: great waves, great people. On board was legendary surfer, paddler, human Dave Kalama. For those of you not familiar with who Dave is, he was one of the pioneers of tow surfing at Peahi, one of the first to jump on a SUP and push the boundries both in distance paddling and wave riding, and is plain and simply one of the most influential figures in surf history. Needless to say it was pretty neat having him on board, talking story with him and shooting him surfing. One of the coolest things for me personally though, was the fact that I was reading Susan Casey’s The Wave, a book that heavily features Kalama as it explores big wave surfing’s history. I would be reading the book upstairs and then come down and pick Dave’s brain to see if things actually went as written and delve even deeper into what Casey was writing about. It’s experiences like this that make what I do so rewarding.